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Thursday, September 11, 2008

Tinker Toys. How many of you remember them? This is a set of toys I absolutely loved as a kid. My mother babysat children from the neighborhood and I can remember sitting on the floor for hours with them playing Tinker Toys. We always fought over the little red missiles because there were only a few of those! I'm not sure whatever happened to that set but when I saw some on EBay several Christmases ago, I couldn't help myself. I bought a huge lot--for my boys of course!

When the package arrived, I was tickled to death! Would they love them as much as I did? I wrapped them up and hid them away, anxious for Christmas Day.

A few days later, a huge package came in the mail from my brother and his family for the kids. We decided to let them open it early and what do you know? (Great minds think alike!) It was the Mega Construction Set of Tinker Toys in a giant can with 325 pieces! I burst out laughing and sat right down with them to build. When they popped the lid, I was astonished at the size of the pieces. The parts were MUCH larger than the vintage ones I had bought on EBay. We built HUGE working cranes, and giant cars and planes!

A few days later, on Christmas Day, the boys opened their "vintage" Tinker Toy set and we set about putting them to the test. Side-by-side, this picture gives you an idea their size difference and also shows some of the different plastic pieces which come with the new set. Sorry, somehow, I missed including an example of the most important parts, the little missiles. . .lol!

So, you ask, which do we like better?? Well, they both have some great things going for them. The smaller ones are just that, more compact and easier to store. They have all the features I remember and you can build cars, tanks, airplanes--anything you can dream up. They are even small enough to take on trips for hotel play.

But, I have to admit, the jumbo Tinker Toys get the most play time at our house. There are just so many cool plastic accessories, in addition to the original wooden type pieces, that you can make tons of stuff you can't with the little ones.

This, by the way, is a closeup of the working gear the boys put to work in their crane. Now, how cool is that?

The creations you make with this set are on the huge side. So you need to have enough space if you want to keep them together for a while for play or display. But, still, I would highly recommend them.

In Conclusion, either set will provide hours and hours of fun, and would make a wonderful gift. My boys love the smaller set because of (can you guess??) the missiles, and the variety of slightly different (in function) round pieces. They like the large new set because of its cool plastic parts. Too bad the sets can't be used interchangeably! But, no matter which set you choose, your whole family will have a blast seeing what cool things they can engineer! Tinker Toys are still a wonderful toy for kids of all ages!

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